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The Impact of the Joint Committee on Human Rights on Government Legislation

This research, conducted by Megan Conway and Alexander Horne,* considers the impact of reports by the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) on Government legislation. The statistics are analysed in some detail in their chapter “Parliament and Human Rights”, which will be included in the forthcoming SPG book Parliament and the Law (2nd edition, eds. A. Horne and G. Drewry, Hart/Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2018). The Excel tables, published below, provide details of the JCHR’s legislative scrutiny between 2010 and 2017. They also evaluate the impact of the JCHR recommendations published in reports in the 2014–15, 2015–16 and 2016–17 parliamentary sessions (and, in particular, whether they led to any changes to Government legislation).

The authors recorded all the conclusions and recommendations made by the JCHR over the three parliamentary sessions and assessed whether they sought to amend Government legislation. They then tracked whether the recommendations were taken forward by any Member of Parliament, or the Government. Amendments that were won on division, or agreed to without debate or division, were logged. Impact was recorded where there was direct evidence of a Committee recommendation being a driver for change. The authors acknowledge that the decisions they reached on impact must, on some occasions, be subjective. They were assisted in verifying some of their conclusions by former JCHR staff. The underlying data has been published as it may be of interest to other researchers considering the work of the JCHR.

*Megan Conway was the former House of Lords Clerk to the JCHR (2013–2016) and Alexander Horne was the former Deputy Legal Adviser to the JCHR (2015–2017).